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He listened through the headphones, his expression growing thoughtful.

When the passage ended, he looked toward me. “She’s afraid he’s not going to make it out.”

“Exactly. She knows what she’s doing with the spell, but she’s terrified she’ll lose him before she finishes. That’s why she keeps talking to him even when he stops answering.”

Hudson glanced back at the page. “And he’s trying to make her think he’s fine because he doesn’t want her panicking.”

“That’s how I read it.”

“Okay. Let me try something.”

I started a fresh take.

His first attempt was perfectly clear but a little too forceful. Drake sounded annoyed that someone had interrupted his afternoon, rather than like a man struggling against an ancient curse.

I stopped the recording and asked Hudson to think about how difficult it would be to reassure someone he cared about when he couldn’t physically reach them.

He nodded, studied the paragraph again, and asked me to read Isadora’s preceding line aloud.

I took off my headphones so I could concentrate on giving him the emotional cue.

“Drake, please. I’ve almost broken the spell. Just keep talking to me.”

Hudson looked directly at me.

“I’m here, Isadora. I can hear you. Don’t you dare give up on me now.”

Oh.

The line was supposed to sound encouraging. Somehow, he’d also made it incredibly intimate.

“That’s much better,” I managed. “Now give me that same feeling at the microphone.”

He smiled and returned to his mark.

The next take was lovely.

His voice remained low and steady, but he’d allowed just enough strain into the words to make Drake’s imprisonment sound frightening. When Isadora finally released him, Hudson gave the character a tired, affectionate laugh that fit the moment perfectly.

I played back the finished passage.

He listened, then nodded toward the screen. “That sounds a lot better than I expected.”

“Because you’re learning to act the scene instead of simply reading the dialogue.”

“I’ve got a good teacher.”

The compliment was so casually delivered that I nearly missed my cue to save the file.

I was beginning to discover that Hudson could say the nicest things without any apparent effort.

We made steady progress through the rest of the morning.

Not every scene required an argument about forestry. Hudson was getting comfortable enough with the microphone that he could read several pages before needing direction, and he was learning to recognize when a passage required tenderness instead of dramatic intensity.

Occasionally, he still encountered something that offended his professional sensibilities.

At one point, Drake used his enchanted axe to persuade a tree to uproot itself and walk uphill.